Behind the scenes of the branding for the two newest PWHL teams

Before hockey takes center stage—or center rink—during the Winter Olympics in February, the puck will drop for the third season of the Professional Women’s Hockey League later this month.

This season, the league is welcoming two expansion teams from Seattle and Vancouver, whose additions were first announced in April. Their brand identities, including team names, logos, and colors, have been in the works since about that time, according to Kanan Bhatt-Shah, VP of brand and marketing for the PWHL, and were released to the public last week.

In other words, say hello to the Seattle Torrent and the Vancouver Goldeneyes.

“In both markets, nature is something that is so prevalent,” Bhatt-Shah told Marketing Brew. “From the minute you get out of the airport, you can feel it in the air…That was really the starting point from a color standpoint.”

As was the case for the original six teams, the PWHL’s marketers took their time constructing the identities for the Torrent and Goldeneyes as league execs look to keep the passionate fanbase for women’s hockey engaged through the evolution of the sport.

Way of the water

The first step Bhatt-Shah and her team took when branding the two expansion teams was to identify team colors, she said. For Seattle, water seemed like the way to go, given how prevalent water-related team names already are in the city, like the Mariners, Kraken, Storm, and Seahawks. The primary color palette for the Torrent features slate green and two shades of blue, which are all meant to reflect the waterways in the city, according to the PWHL.

“We just kept going back to water,” Bhatt-Shah said.

The Goldeneyes’ colors include a “pacific blue, coastal cream, and earthy bronze, with hints of sunset gold,” of course, as well as a sky blue, per the league. The team is named after the common goldeneye, a duck that’s often found nesting near Vancouver waterways. The marketing team knew they wanted to consider an animal name fairly early in the process, Bhatt-Shah said, since fans had expressed interest in one since the inaugural six names were announced last year.

“They travel in synchrony, they’re incredibly fast, they have incredible vision, [and] so many amazing attributes that felt like they were incredibly positive, and, oddly enough, incredibly emblematic of what you would want a hockey team to exemplify,” she said.

Go with the flow

Before moving on to logos, Bhatt-Shah said her team needed to make sure the IP was “actually available for use.” Aquatic names are popular even outside of Seattle, but “goldeneyes” and “torrent” cleared a “rigorous IP process,” she said.

Once the names were locked in, the branding team, which Bhatt-Shah said included members from both cities, was able to design logos. The Goldeneyes’ logo features a (what else?) goldeneye front and center, encircled by subtle wings. The outer tip of the eye points to the northwest, a nod to Vancouver’s geographical location.

The Torrent’s logo, meanwhile, is the letter “S,” which is meant to represent both the city and “a rush of water…mirroring river channels,” according to the league.

The jerseys won’t be emblazoned with the full team names and logos until next season, but the generic jerseys with the city names for the 2025-26 season are already selling fast: The Seattle jerseys broke the league record for the most single-day jersey sales.

While it was league employees who created the team identities, they also considered input from the fans, and Bhatt-Shah said she’d be happy to see the brands evolve as they’re rolled out.

“They’re so passionate, and whether it’s in the YouTube chats, or in person at games, or on social, they tend to be very vocal about what they want to see in a team name, what they love, what are things they hope to see,” she said, later adding that “I honestly cannot wait to see how they take these identities and really take ownership of them and infuse themselves in these team brands.”